A toxic culture, the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and a litany of organisational failures have been blamed for the Labour Party's disastrous loss in the last election.
Labour Together, a group including MPs Ed Miliband and Lucy Powell, party members, union leaders and media figures, has investigated a crushing defeat it said was was "a long time coming".
The group's no-holds-barred report sets out the "political, organisational and digital" failures which helped catapult Labour to its worst result since 1935, and while attempting to chart a path back to power, it grimly said the party "has a mountain to climb" to win the next election.
The report said under Mr Corbyn, Labour had been "unprepared" for an election, went in with "no clear message", and ultimately with a complex manifesto, marked by a plethora of policy announcements seen as impossible to deliver.
"There is a broad consensus across the Party – mirrored in the results from the survey of Labour members – that a combination of concerns about the leadership, Labour's position on Brexit and Labour's manifesto not being seen as deliverable damaged Labour's chances in the election," the report said.
"The Commission concludes that the weaknesses going into this election were interlinked, and indivisible. They catalysed long term trends between Labour and its voter coalition."
While saying the end of Brexit as a campaigning topic and a change of leader – from Mr Corbyn to Sir Keir Starmer – would not be enough to engineer a return to power at the next election, the report does point a finger at Mr Corbyn and issues under his leadership, including anti-Semitism.
"Concerns about Labour's leadership were a significant factor in the election loss in 2019," the report said.
"'Stop Jeremy Corbyn' was a major driver of the Conservatives' success across all their key groups including previous non-voters, and among all the swing voters Labour lost to the Tories.
"The very low poll ratings on leadership going into the 2019 election cannot easily be disentangled from the handling of issues like Brexit, party disunity and anti-Semitism." Aol.
Seems pretty accurate.
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